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In answer to Jasper Sharp's question about whether other non-Western cultures besides the Japanese/Korean employed "benshis" to accompany silent films, I am including the following paragraph from an article, "Silent Cinema in the South" by S. T. Bhaskaran, published in the January, 1980 issue of "Cinema Vision India: The Indian Journal of Cinematic Art" (the special issue entitled "Pioneers of Indian Cinema: The Silent Era" with a foreword by Satyajit Ray). In a section dealing with "Exhibition and Production of Silent Films" in South India, Bhaskaran writes:<BR>
"Since the audiences were preponderantly illiterate, particularly in the rural areas, cinema houses engaged a narrator who read the title cards aloud for the benefit of the audience and he also spoke the lines for the main characters. In addition, he provided a running commentary on what was going on on the screen. Very often the narrator's performance itself acquired an independent value and films, which would otherwise have been unsuccessful, were often saved by the narrators. The more entertaining narrators, the 'stars' amongst them, were much sought after and some became actors when the talkies appeared."<BR>
While the "benshi" tradition did not become as universal throughout India as was the case in Japan--other film theatres in India presented silents with musical accompaniment only as was the general practice in the West--still, it's clear from the information above that Indian cinema practice evolved a tradition exactly the same as in Japan. The practice of using "benshis" also apparently became deeply rooted in Burma and Thailand during the silent era. Indeed, there was a curious evolution in the history of the Burmese and Thai film industries. Almost entirely unknown in the West even today, Burma established a flourishing film industry in 1920 and, as with China and Japan, was producing silent films through the mid-to-late 1930s. Thailand's era of indigenous silent film production was briefer--from 1927 to 1932--before the Thais began making talkies. However, due to shortages of 35mm. film stock in the wartorn 1940s, both Burma and Thailand turned to producing feature films in 16mm. without sound tracks--in effect, silent films. However, unlike the classic or traditional silent film, whether in the West or the Orient, these later Burmese and Thai efforts did not, to the best of my knowledge, use intertitles. Instead, several live actors (not just a lone "benshi") worked with a written script to provide dialogue in the theatres in place of the missing soundtrack. I think the production of these kinds of films ceased in Burma sometime in the 1950s, but in Thailand these "silent" films predominated for many more years and indeed continued to be made up until the early 1970s. <BR>
As far as I know, China proper never established a full "benshi" tradition to accompany their silent films. This, of course, does not include Taiwan and Manchuria, then part of the Japanese Empire, where, under Japanese cultural influence, it became the practice for "benshis" in the Chinese language to accompany silent films, both the Chinese imports and those of Japan and the West. As was true in both Japan and Korea, the "benshi" in Taiwan often became a means of fostering radical, anti-establishment protest. In the 1920s, the Taiwan Cultural League, formed to resist Japanese imperial domination, acquired a projector and began showing silent films with a "benshi" accompaniment. Lin Qiuwu (1903-1934), the renowned radical Buddhist monk who blended Buddhism and Marxist socialism, often acted as a "benshi" for these presentations. However, to the best of my knowledge, the preferred presentation for silent films on the Chinese mainland as well as Hong Kong was to present the films with musical accompaniment alone. I have heard, however, that in some Chinese theatres, there were people who read the intertitles aloud for the benefit of audience members who could not read. Still, it's my impression that these Chinese "readers" limited themselves to just reading the titles and did not try to develop their services into a full-scale art as was the case in Japan and parts of India. <BR>
In my research into early film production in the Islamic Middle East, I have yet to find any evidence that anything like a "benshi" tradition took root in presentations of silents, either in Egypt and the other Arab countries, or in Turkey and Iran. Perhaps I will yet find contrary information, but, as far as I know at present, the Muslim world accompanied silent films, both their own and those from other countries, with music only. <BR>
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William M. Drew</FONT></HTML>